Superbowl Advertisement Essay

During the 2017 Superbowl, there were many advertisements attempting to call awareness to equality in the workplace, specifically equal payment for men and women. One of the advertisements, shown by Audi, had gained a lot of attention about its subject matter. Audi had released an advertisement titled "Daughter", showing a father of his daughter watching her compete in a cart race where she is the only girl racing against mean spirited boys. This advertisement by Audi attempts to call to attention of gender and sexuality issues by calling attention to having men and women receive equal pay for their work. Despite the message, the advertisement showed that Audi was using generalized behavior patterns or social constructs and picking up trending

The boys are depicted as the enemies wanting to go as far as to hurt the girl in the kart race. Meanwhile, the girl is depicted as weak and having an unfair advantage as the boys gang up on her. She eventually perseveres in the end by winning the race, which can be interpreted as proving that she can be as capable as men. Aaron Devor states that these behavior types are frequent attributes by writing "these two clusters of attributes are most commonly seen as mirror images of one another with masculinity usually characterized by dominance and aggression, and femininity by passivity and submission" (505). One side is depicted as good while the other is depicted as harmful. With the way the boys are represented in the advertisement, Devor states how this common ideal image of a man is the reason why people see females as "'born losers' and to strive to eliminate any similarities to feminine people from their own personalities" (509). The advertisement uses the attributes of "toxic masculinity" and "fragile feminity" to further push the message that women are not strong enough compared to the dominance that men possess. There were never any concrete laws stating boys have to be aggressive and that girls must be fragile, but many people are raised with these generalized social constructs that have been passed down multiple generations. I believe that anyone regardless of gender has